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RedditThe widows of great men either gracefully retire from history's stage or take their own lonely road. Coretta Scott King had little hesitancy about carrying on her husband's work. As she said in 1956, "All along I have supported my husband in this cause...whatever happens to him, it happens to me." Just four days after his assassination, in 1968, she marched with the garbage workers he had championed and began work on the Poor People's Campaign. She continued to walk in his steps, but eventually she found her own cadence. She was active in the Nuclear Freeze movement and preached nonviolence. She went on to support gay rights and AIDS victims. She was, as SCLC co-founder the Rev. Joseph Lowery said, "the first First Lady of the movement."
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From King to Obama
Steve Cobble: Barack Obama stands on the shoulders of many as he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee. One set of those shoulders belongs to Jesse Jackson.
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From Fannie Lou Hamer to Barack Obama
John Nichols: Democrats have come a long way from the first Denver convention a century ago.
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Sweet Martin's Badass Song
Scott Saul: Several new books on Martin Luther King take a closer look at the rhetoric and economic politics of the civil rights icon.
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Lost Causes Not Yet Found
Kevin M. Kruse: In Defying Dixie, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore seeks to reclaim the radical origins of the modern civil rights struggle.
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Hearts and Minds
Thomas J. Sugrue: Is there more to racism in America than intolerance and immorality? Four books shed light.
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'The Mississippi Challenge'
George Slaff: Black people in the state were "regularly and systematically" denied the vote by "intimidation, harassment, economic reprisal, property damage, terrorization, violence and illegal and unconstitutional registration procedures."
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King's Legacy of Change
Grace Lee Boggs: No single person can be the agent of change: the vision must come from all of us.
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Noted.
Sarah Palin, pit bull in lipstick; Amy Goodman behind bars.
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Tale of Two Conventions
Populist politics in Denver; an elaborate fraud in St. Paul.
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Noted.
Dems and the Constitution, dispatches from Denver, journos rescue our correspondent in Georgia.
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The Biden Bid
It could have been worse--a lot worse.
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We'll Take It From Here
Eight years ago, the people gave the GOP the keys to the country. It's time to take them back.
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Noted.
The I-word, back on the table; Fannie Lou Hamer and the Democrats.
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For a New Economics
The tepid platform Democrats will adopt in Denver isn't a new social contract, but it does go places Republicans never will. Let's hope Obama does better.
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